Chapter IX. 2007
CHAPTER IX
The day moved with a slowness Camilla never imagined possible.
A day of small rooms made smaller by the eyes on her and lack of windows.
Other than the main atrium, Retreat was a place of no sunlight.
By the time she made her way back to the dining room for a pathetically tiny lunch, she felt positively vampiric.
After breakfast, she’d not had the time to look for Brianna. Barbara swooped in the moment the staff removed the dishes from the table, Camilla’s assignments for the day in hand, the supposed allotted hour to return to her room to shower or dress or curl her hair and eyelashes forgotten.
“The Gospel and Women’s Identity,” Barbara read from the pages in her hand, and then handed them to Camilla. “That’s a great one for your first group session! Pastor Wade will serve as your individual counselor. He’s tough, but by the end, you’ll be grateful for how he’s held you accountable.”
By the time Camilla swept her eyes over the women being herded toward their individual sessions, Brianna was already gone.
She fought against her disappointment. Even if Brianna were standing right in front of her, they wouldn’t be able to speak freely, and there were no opportunities for sneaking off.
Every moment of every day was accounted for, and even though the nights belonged to the women, they were locked away in their rooms and probably under the watchful eye of a hidden security camera.
Barbara led her down another hallway, the doors closing as other women shuffled inside.
“I’ll leave you here.” She paused and rapped lightly on the door labeled as Pastor Wade’s office. “But you’ll see me throughout the day. I won’t ever be far, so don’t feel like you can’t find me to ask any question you may have.”
Even though she presented her last sentence as helpful, Camilla heard it for the threat it was. Someone is always watching.
“Come in, Miss Burson,” Pastor Wade called, and Barbara nodded, smiled, and made her exit.
Camilla drew in a breath, a reminder to keep her face placid, and stepped into the office.
“Have a seat.” Pastor Wade smiled from behind his desk, a knockoff version of her father.
Blond highlights so perfectly placed they clearly came from a salon.
Strong, square jawline. Bleached teeth. Handsome in all the textbook ways, but as he smiled at her, she saw the cruelty threaded in his expression.
How clearly he enjoyed this position of power.
He flipped open a folder in front of him and pulled a pen from the holder on the desk. “Now. Why don’t you tell me a bit about why you’re here.”
Camilla froze. What a stupid question. They both knew why she was there. Because her father demanded it.
But she dropped her head. Made sure her response came out slightly slurred. Sluggish as the drugs were supposed to be making her. “Dishonesty.”
He made a mark on the paper in the folder. “Mm-hmm. When the devil first tempted Eve, don’t you think she understood what it was he was doing? She knew the sin. Had been warned against it. And yet she made a choice of her flesh. One with the intent only of pleasing her body.”
Camilla kept her head down so he would not see if she inadvertently rolled her eyes. He didn’t need to go over this Sunday school minutia with her. If she was on the other side of the desk, she could outlecture him without even really trying.
For the next hour, Pastor Wade droned on about every woman in the Bible guilty of dishonesty. Delilah and her betrayal of Samson. Salome and her request for the head of John the Baptist. Potiphar’s wife and her lust for the young prophet Joseph.
Every now and then, she would blink up at him in a fake show of attention, until finally, another knock sounded at the door. Another woman come for her hour-long personal session.
“See you tomorrow, Miss Burson,” he said, his hand along her lower back as he guided her out.
It made her skin crawl. Only once the door was closed behind her did she scratch at the place where his hand rested, wishing she could peel back the skin there, the raw meat beneath unblemished and clear of his touch.
The hours crawled as she went from room to room, each one containing another Pastor Somebody channeling his very best version of her father.
An endless stream of prayers and Bible verses and platitudes and reminders of all the ways they’d failed not just as Christians but as women.
The only thing keeping her mind from unraveling was her continued search for Brianna, but as the day wore on, she’d not seen her.
Not even at lunch, the meal so quick and focused that she dared not sneak a peek at the table where she’d seen her earlier.
By the time the women all shambled back to the dining room for dinner, Camilla’s entire body ached from the hours spent either sitting or kneeling in prayer, and her mind was numb from boredom.
As she walked, she glanced at the table where she’d seen Brianna, but the seat was empty.
Part of her wondered if she’d seen Brianna at all.
If, in her desperation, she’d imagined it.
She sank into her designated seat and lifted her napkin.
As she unfolded it, a small piece of paper fell into her lap.
Quickly, she draped the cloth over her thighs so it covered the paper and scanned the room.
Had anyone seen? She took stock of each bland face, each blank stare, all focused on either their plates or the dais or their hands.
Even the staff members were distracted with their own murmured conversations, the weight of the day lessening their focus on the women they monitored. She made a show of rolling her neck.
She placed a hand under the napkin and grazed her fingertips over the thick, glossy paper, wishing she could read what it said just by touch.
The rest of her table had not yet arrived; women still trickled in from their various sessions.
Her closest neighbor sat a few feet to her left, her back to Camilla.
There were only a few moments before the others seated themselves at the table. Before there was the possibility of other eyes, drugged, perhaps, but still eager to report any indiscretion from the preacher’s daughter. Anything to gain whatever favor they could in this hellhole.
Smoothing the paper flat, she slid it out from beneath the napkin, her pulse fluttering at her throat as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at.
It was a torn section of the map Barbara had shown her earlier. Both Wing A and the Annex unfolded before her, the room numbers blending together as she tried to process faster.
Slow down. Breathe.
She forced herself to go slower, to look more deliberately, and then she saw it. A tiny x marked over one of the rooms in the Annex. When she saw what the room was, she stifled a laugh.
A restroom. Of course. The staff members couldn’t keep them from needing the restroom, and she could only hope, as she had earlier back in her own room, there were no cameras. She flipped the map over, and there, scrawled in faint pencil that would be easy to miss, a single directive.
Go B-4 prayer
At the sight of Brianna’s looping handwriting, she felt tears gather, and she blinked rapidly. She couldn’t cry. Not if she didn’t want anyone asking questions or following her to “check in.”
The room grew more crowded, the waitstaff appearing at the tables to fill water glasses in preparation for the start of dinner. If she was going to take the chance, it would have to be now.
Pushing herself backward, she rose, her palm still cupped around the map as she approached the back table where Barbara and her staff cronies sat.
“Restroom?” she asked.
Barbara barely glanced up at her. “Prayer is about to start. You should have gone earlier.”
“It’s an emergency,” Camilla pressed.
Barbara lifted her glasses and rubbed at the indentations left on her nose. “Fine. Make it quick.”
Camilla nodded, and in what she hoped was a good show of faith, jogged from the dining room and back out into the muted gold light of the atrium.
Sweat pooled against her lower back as she crossed the massive open space, the rush of her blood in her ears muffling her footsteps as she turned in the Annex’s direction.
If there were cameras on her, she could claim she got turned around.
That she didn’t know where the closest bathroom was and was glad to have finally found one in the labyrinth of hallways and doors.
Even still, she hurried. Of course, the bathroom on Brianna’s map had to be at the very end of the hallway.
As she approached the door, she slowed. What if Brianna was still angry with her?
What if the only reason she hid the shred of map in Camilla’s napkin was to draw her here and get her in trouble?
It would only further prove the point she made the night of the party.
That she was a tool for her father. That everything about Camilla was fake.
She shook her head. Brianna was her friend. Even if she was still angry, she had to talk with her. To apologize and tell her everything that happened with Tania Fullerton and her mother and Vera and the Dark Sisters. With a deep breath, she pushed open the door and stepped inside.
A mirror reflected back at her, the light catching as she stepped farther in and swept her gaze over the sinks and handful of stalls. Empty. No Brianna leaning against the sink. No Brianna checking her hair in the mirror.